Parents: If you think it is emotionally difficult to have your child attend their first day at a new school and/or begin a new school year, be thankful you are not a bird.

On average, I am told, it takes about two to four weeks for a baby bird to learn to fly. Or, in other words, from hatchling to fledgling to “flying the coop” within a month! Thank goodness, we have our kids in our nest longer than that.

Nonetheless, while we educators look forward to the excitement and energy of a new school year, the return of our students and the addition of new faces, many parents and kids are understandably anxious.

When asking about a young person’s future, the traditional question adults often pose to teenagers is, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

If you have heard me speak on this topic before, you will know that I think that this, albeit well-intentioned, question is out of date.

For one, the question historically was focussed, understandably, on what a young person envisioned to be their chosen profession. The issue is that, today in particular, most kids don’t have an answer to that question. Ideas and realities around work, workplaces and career paths have greatly evolved.

Further, this conversation-starter assumes that a child’s choice of career would help the adult better understand the adolescent. After all, you can get a better sense of what a kid is all about by their career choice, right? Nope, not always! And this is particularly not the case these days.

If you were to examine our website, marketing brochures or our strategic plan, for example, you would not see or read about Breakfast Olympics at Trinity College School. Typically, it is not an event that the School widely promotes.

In fact, it is not an event that I typically champion. However, I felt differently about Breakfast Olympics this year.

I still love to receive greeting cards or cards of any type, regardless of the occasion. I am not sure that anyone sends postcards anymore, but I used to love receiving those too. Actually, in my youth, I loved to send postcards; probably because I was somewhere warm, international and on vacation and the intended recipient of the postcard was not. Looking back, I suppose it was an “old school” version of an Instagram or Facebook post.

On the subject of cards, I am thinking that, maybe, it’s time to change the term “report card.”

Or at least drop the term “report.” It sounds so ominous. The reality is that the vast majority of report cards that I read are more like a welcomed greeting card and better than any postcard I have received. Nowadays, teachers are far more apt to be positive and effusive about a child’s talents, personality, work ethic, engagement and successes. The days of fearing the arrival of the report card, I think, are generally gone.